Var. trilobàta, Gray. With smaller leaflets (½–1´ long), crenately few-lobed or incised toward the summit.—Long Pine, Neb., and common westward. Unpleasantly scented.
§ 2. CÒTINUS. Ovary becoming very gibbous in fruit, with the remains of the styles lateral; flowers in loose ample panicles, the pedicels elongating and becoming plumose; leaves simple, entire.
7. R. cotinoìdes, Nutt. Glabrous or nearly so; leaves thin, oval, 3–6´ long; flowers and fruit as in the cultivated Smoke-tree (R. Cotinus).—Mo. to Tenn., and southward.—A tree, 25–40° high.
Order 31. POLYGALÀCEÆ. (Milkwort Family.)
Plants with irregular hypogynous flowers, 4–8 diadelphous or monadelphous stamens, their 1-celled anthers opening at the top by a pore or chink, the fruit a 2-celled and 2-seeded pod.
1. POLÝGALA, Tourn. Milkwort.
Flower very irregular. Calyx persistent, of 5 sepals, of which 3 (the upper and the 2 lower) are small and often greenish, while the two lateral or inner (called wings) are much larger, and colored like the petals. Petals 3, hypogynous, connected with each other and with the stamen-tube, the middle (lower) one keel-shaped and often crested on the back. Stamens 6 or 8; their filaments united below into a split sheath, or into 2 sets, cohering more or less with the petals, free above; anthers 1-celled, often cup-shaped, opening by a hole or broad chink at the apex. Ovary 2-celled, with a single anatropous ovule pendulous in each cell; style prolonged and curved; stigma various. Fruit a small, loculicidal 2-seeded pod, usually rounded and notched at the apex, much flattened contrary to the very narrow partition. Seeds carunculate. Embryo large, straight, with flat and broad cotyledons, in scanty albumen.—Bitter plants (low herbs in temperate regions), with simple entire often dotted leaves, and no stipules; sometimes (as in the first two species) bearing cleistogamous flowers next the ground. (An old name composed of πολύς, much, and γάλα, milk, from a fancied property of its increasing this secretion.)
[*] Perennial or biennial; flowers purple or white; leaves alternate.
[+] Flowers showy, rose-purple, conspicuously crested; also bearing inconspicuous colorless cleistogamous flowers on subterranean branches.
1. P. paucifòlia, Willd. Perennial; flowering stems short (3–4´ high), from long slender prostrate or subterranean shoots, which also bear concealed fertile flowers; lower leaves small and scale-like, scattered, the upper ovate, petioled, crowded at the summit; flowers 1–3, large, peduncled; wings obovate, rather shorter than the fringe-crested keel; stamens 6; caruncle of 2 or 3 awl-shaped lobes longer than the seed.—Woods, in light soil, N. Eng. to Minn., Ill., and southward along the Alleghanies. May.—A delicate plant, with very handsome flowers, 9´´ long, rose-purple, or rarely pure white. Sometimes called Flowering Wintergreen, but more appropriately Fringed Polygala.